Vines and Rushes crafts a sense of place in state's budding wine business

Vines & Rushes Winery, is a growing Wisconsin winery between Ripon and Berlin. The winery tends five acres of cold-hardy grapes, which are engineered to withstand Wisconsin’s stiff winters and they produce 7000 gallons of wine from local grapes.
Joe Sienkiewicz/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

RIPON – On the back wall, in the new dining room at Vines and Rushes Winery, there's a black and white photo of the 5900, the last train that ran from Milwaukee to Ripon to Berlin.

The train no longer makes that route, but cyclists do. In the 1970s, the tracks were ripped up, and the path became the Mascoutin Valley State Trail, which runs right behind the winery's decade-old vineyard.

Vines and Rushes, 410 County Highway E, exists in a state of confluence between a few industries: retail, agriculture and tourism. The winery produces from grapes grown here, as well as elsewhere about the state. But it is relentless, too, in hosting musicians and drawing tourists — even yoga on Wednesdays in the thick of the vineyard.

On a typical weekend, 500 or more visitors will stop by, some peeling off the Mascoutin for a glass of wine.

"There's a French term, 'terroir,' that roughly translates to 'a sense of place,'" Ryan Prellwitz, owner, said. "I think that's what the tourist is looking for. If they are visitors to Wisconsin, they are looking for something that gives them a sense of place of what that area is like."

Vines and Rushes planted its first vines in 2007, and now boasts five acres of grapes in the rolling hills four miles from Ripon and eight from Berlin. Prellwitz grows so-called cold-hardy grapes, which were engineered in the 1970s to withstand Wisconsin's wicked winters.

Prellwitz said the industry's growth follows a boom in craft beer, and more demand for locally sourced food. Unlike beer, there's no playbook for turning cold-hardy grapes into top-quality wine. Wine-makers are still unsure what parts of the Midwest are best for yielding what flavors.

The result is plenty of experimentation. Prellwitz said it's an ongoing conversation to tease out what other vintners are doing, what's working well and what isn't.

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Ryan Prellwitz looks over the grapes that will be harvested in September or October.(Photo: Joe Sienkiewicz / USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)

The state actually has deeper roots in wine than you might expect. In the early 1840s, Hungarian nobleman Agoston Haraszthy founded a winery near Sauk Praire, where Wollersheim Winery stands today, the second-oldest winery in the country. He would later leave Wisconsin for California, becoming a pioneer of the wine industry there, importing the first grape vines into San Francisco.

The advent of the cold-hardy grape at the University of Minnesota 50 years ago laid the groundwork for wine in Wisconsin. But it wasn't until recently that the industry began to take off.

In 2013, the Wisconsin's wine industry supported more than 700 jobs statewide, generating about $151 million in sales and another $9 million in state and local taxes, according to a UW-Madison Extension study about the impact of the industry.

Vines and Rushes has doubled in size since its inception. Last summer, it added a "great room" to complement its tasting area and back-room production space. There are tables and chairs throughout, a bar that serves beer from Ripon's Knuth Brewing Co. and a pizza oven.

Unlike many midwest wineries, Vines and Rushes carries a balance of dry and sweet wines. Many are named for people and places that define the vineyard.

One blend is a strawberry wine, a callback to the land's first life as a strawberry farm. Prellwitz has named wines after his wife and daughters, and another after Rush Lake, a popular duck-hunting lake that was polluted from lead shotgun pellets. Throughout Vines and Rushes there are reminders of where you are.

"We know this land really, really well and we have for a long time," Prellwitz. "We like to tell stories with our wine."

Reach Nate Beck at 920-858-9657 or nbeck@gannett.com; on Twitter: @NateBeck9